This is an excerpt from the book I am writing called, "Living Your Purposeful Life."
I know that there are times in your life that you think you have had a difficult week and I would wager that if you really sat down, you had a good week, except that you were focusing on the wrong things.
My week started out that way, even before the week started. I got an email from my boss and in the email he accused me of not doing my job, not doing things that I told him several times that I did, basically yelling at me and that email was followed up with another email saying, “this is not good, we are meeting about this on Monday.”
Thankfully, the email came on a Sunday and there was no way I could see him, because I felt like hitting him right then and there. When I got the email, I was just about to drive home and for the entire drive home, I was fuming. I was pissed.
When I got home, I knew that I had to get rid of this energy. First, I sent an email to a friend about what was going on and then I went for a run. I am not a runner, so I ran for a bit, walked for a bit, ran some more, walked some more, and about an hour later, I was home.
I felt better, but not great. So, I listened to myself and did what I thought that I needed to do. I spent some time gathering information to prepare for the meeting and I was surprised with the information that I was uncovering. I also updated my friend with how I was feeling and what I was doing.
In the evening, I felt the need to give myself some “Reiki”. I say that in quotes, because I have never been trained in “Reiki”, but I have received “Reiki” and my body felt like it needed it. So, I laid on the floor in my bedroom, put on some music and gave myself some “Reiki”.
Later, when I went to bed, I made sure I cleared my space and then I drew in what am I trying to bring forth in this lifetime and felt deeply into that vision as I drifted off the sleep and with a great surprise, I slept right through until my alarm went off the next morning. I normally wake up very early on Mondays and toss and turn until my alarm goes off.
As I drove into the office that morning, a question popped into my mind, “What wants to happen through me?” Nothing came to me right away, but throughout the morning, I kept taking some time to feel into the question before my lunch meeting with my boss. Also, when I got into the office, I did follow my normal routine of a meditation to clear myself and get ready for the day.
At 11:30, by boss emailed and said to print a bunch of stuff and let’s go. I printed to stuff and we were off to lunch. As we stood waiting for the elevator, he was talking to somebody else and I could feel myself tighten up, but I told myself to just breath and I felt myself draw back into me and relax. The meeting started with a bunch of questions like, “what do you think about…” which lead to some interesting discussions. When he finally started to focus on me and my role, the conversation was more around, “I would like you to do this” and he explained it clearly and without any anger that had appeared in the email. It was a wonderful meeting.
Out of the Monday meeting, my boss wanted to have a meeting with my entire team to have each one of them explain what they are doing for the week and he would attend. I was concerned as I did not know how he would be in front of the team or how the team would react to a meeting with him in it. The meeting went off very well and my boss was impressed with most of the engineers on the team. For me, I mainly held the space for something wonderful to happen and my boss was really open to them and positive.
Was everything that smooth this week? Of course not. My boss has wanted to meet at 10am on Friday to cover some of the things we talked about on Monday. I felt prepared until 8am when he said, bring this to the meeting, which was something totally new and the request through me into a fit and I ran around for the next two hours to prepare for the meeting.
When the meeting arrived, the meeting took a totally different path and the information that I prepared was never used and a 30 minute meeting turned into an hour and a half. I felt thoughts float into my space and I voiced them to add to the conversation.
I know you are reading this and saying, “you had a great week! How could you say you had difficult week? How could that compare to my week?” I am telling you this, because I took control of my week. Instead of letting my boss set me off and drag me down into a week of hell, I did those things that I needed to do to change my week. I collected information that I needed for the meeting, though I never used it. I listened to what my body needed. Ok, going for the run helped, but since I was not a runner, my legs were screaming about it until Wednesday.
Several keys from this week stand out:
- Listen to what you need. If you need to burn some energy, burn the energy. If you need to just sit and listen to music, sit and listen to music. If you need to collect some information, collect the information. Do the work you need to do!
- Ask yourself an empowering question, like “what wants to happen through me?” and really ponder the question. I love this question because for me, there is a presupposition that there is something more in life than just me.
- Connect with people who are going to lift you up. I connected with those people in my network to lift me up. How do you know? Well, when you tell them a problem, do you feel better or worse?